Review of The Radical Edge

A review of The Radical Edge by Steve Farber that I wrote for 800-CEO-Read has been published on their blog. It was a cool book and a fun review to write.

The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World

Goodbye Mike

Monday night I went to the mortuary to say goodbye to my friend. I knew he wouldn't look like he did in life and he didn't, more like a statue that someone had made of him, a resemblance. But it did seem like he had the slightest hint of a smile. My friend was always quick with a smart remark and he looked like he might be thinking of one. So, I felt like he was there. People were talking and it seemed like he was being left out of the conversation, so after a while I got a chair and sat beside him. When I had been there a little while, suddenly I felt as if I had been enclosed in a little bubble of peace and calm, not what I was feeling before, and I thought it had come from him. As if maybe he was hanging around with us for a little while and now had that power to make us feel better.

Tuesday we shut down the office and we all went to the service. People talked about Mike and there was a movie with music and still pictures of him at all ages, alone and with family and friends, some that made us laugh, some that made us cry. Then we took him up to Santa Fe for a final ceremony with military honors.

Goodbye Mike, I'll see you later.

Michael J Haggar

My friend and colleague, Mike Haggar, died on Thursday. I couldn't believe it at first but I know now it must be true, because they published his obituary in the Albuquerque Journal today. Here it is.

Mike taught me about servers and terminals, to install Unix, to set up users and profiles, printers and modems, what the guts were in that box, formats and custom reports, and how to teach people what I knew. He taught me humility and compassion, because he told me, calmly and sympathetically, "You know, when you get up on your high horse, Marianne, it doesn't even matter that you're right." He was one of the people who helped me to see and make the right choices so that, eventually, I could figure things out and write my book. I will always remember him.

Blogging 101 Presentation and Links

Welcome LERA and Rainbow Artists and everyone interested in blogging!

I first gave the Blogging 101 presentation at Southwest Writers. You can find my entire presentation including the handouts in my February 2006 archives by clicking here. You should start at the bottom and work you way back up since the entries are in reverse chronological order.

Then look down in this month's entries (June 16, 2006) for links to SEOelite, free advice on Search Engine Optimization.

Have a great time blogging!

Blogging 101 at Rainbow Artists

Later tomorrow night, I will be at the Rainbow Artists meeting to teach Blogging 101! The meeting starts at 6:45 PM and is being held at the:

Manzano Mesa Multigenerational Center
501 Elizabeth SE
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Rainbow Artists is a New Mexico based, multiracial, multicultural, multigenerational collective organized to support and promote one another as we work in our various art forms.

Town of Bernalillo Public Library

When my book was first published back in November, the first place I sold it was at the NM Co-op Bookstore in Cottonwood Mall, New Mexico Books & More. And one of the first people to buy my book was the Juanita Montano, the Library Director of the Town of Bernalillo Public Library. I think she bought many books by local authors for the library, which is so cool! So, tomorrow at 5:00 PM, I will be at the library for the re-dedication ceremony. So, go check out my book in Bernalillo!

Fourth Girl

Third Girl

First Boy

Second Girl

First Girl

Girlie's Puppies

Our friend Jimmy's dog, Girlie, had puppies about six weeks ago. Now they're ready for their first photo shoot! First, here's Girlie:

Opray Winfrey

I also told the new bloggers at Land of Enchantment Romance Writers (LERA) that any mention of Oprah Winfrey would bring up lots of Google ads for her show. It worked the first time when I sent her a letter and blogged about it. Let's see if it works again. I have not yet gotten a response to my letter, which I sent along with a copy of my book, Doing the Right Thing and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time. But just in case she's checking, Oprah, I'm ready to fly to Chicago anytime to talk to you about how to change the world.

Search Engine Optimization

If you've started your blog or are getting ready to, I recommend reading some of the free advice given out at these pages at Brad Callen's SEO Elite website. He calls it "7 Days to Complete Search Engine Optimization" and it's a good start:

http://seoelite.com/Lesson1.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson2-as.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson3-zs.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson4-zv.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson5-an.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson6-mn.htm
http://seoelite.com/Lesson7-yt.htm

In the final few lessons, he starts talking more about the software he developed, but there are also a lot of excellent ideas that don't cost anything to get from him or to implement on your blog!

Doing the Right Thing Workshop

I have been hired to do a workshop for an organization next year. But the advertising starts next month! Here's the promo I wrote for it:

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time

Join your colleagues and writer Marianne Powers in a workshop based on her book, Doing the Right Thing and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time, A Book About People Who Work in Offices and Why We Fight. Why do we fight? Because we’re not being treated the way we want to be treated. What do we want? Different things, but principally, respect for our strengths and compassion for our weaknesses. How do we give that in order to get it? That’s what Marianne will describe in “21 Perspectives Anyone Can Use to Resolve Conflicts and Create Better Relationships with People at Work”.

Marianne Powers is a writer and public speaker in the areas of management, conflict resolution, work relationships, and personal and professional growth and development. She has 30 years experience as an office worker, manager, and consultant in over 50 companies in Maryland, Nevada, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Washington DC. A dedicated Toastmaster, Marianne is a member of five clubs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Toastmasters Rush

We had a great meeting tonight at Sandia Lite! There were five of us -- Marianne, Laura, Bill, Matt, and Marco (Connie's new name!) -- so we decided to let everyone give a speech and get evaluations from all of us. Because Matt and Marco were new to our club, we explained a lot about what we were doing, especially with evaluations, and it motivated us all, even the ones doing the explaining!

Since you might be new to Toastmasters, I'll explain that with evaluations we try to see all the great and good things and talk about them, then notice something that we think would make the speech even better, and then round it off with something else that was good. It's funny how the suggestions for improvement are so important, how they show that you are paying attention and, if done right, how much you care about helping the other person.

It's magic when people get together to pursue a common goal, especially when that goal is being the best that you can be!

Steve Pavlina

In my Blogging 101 class, I always talk about Steve Pavlina. He started putting Google Adsense ads on his blog in February 2005. That month he made $53. That is actually very impressive. Ads typically pay about 5 cents, sometimes up to a dollar, rarely more. But Steve really figured it out, because by January 2006, he was making $4,700 a month from the Google Adsense ads on his blog! Here are his links:

website: Steve Pavlina
blog: Steve Pavlina's Blog
article about Adsense revenue:
How to Make Money From Your Blog

Writers to Writers

Writers to Writers is a group that meets on the second Monday of the month at 6:30 PM at the Hastings at Coors & Montano in Albuquerque. Tonight, the talk was "Writing in the Mythological Voice", which I thought might be for fiction writers, not my genre. But I have learned over the past few years that every kind of writing has something for every writer to learn, so I decided to go anyway and hang out with the other writers. Besides, I wanted to visit my books, which are on sale there, and count them!

The speaker tonight was Natalie Reid and she was excellent. It didn't take long for me to become interested in the mythological voice. I loved her parable called the River Daughter, which she had printed on a card over a photo of a river (new ways to market your writing!). And I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise, where we closed our eyes and she took us into a crystal cave so that we could let the crystal speak through us about an object that we had with us (in a mythological voice, of course). It was magical!

I only found two of my books, which is good because it means the other ones found new homes! They were in the regional literature section, if you are looking for them, because I am a local author. But you know that they belong in management beside In Search of Excellence, The One Minute Manager, and The Wisdom of Teams, although it doesn't seem to matter much!

Romance Writers are Fun!

Blogging 101 at the Land of Enchantment Romance Writers went well. They were a lively bunch, as promised by their Program Director. If you write romances, I highly recommend this group because they are a lot of fun and I learned much from them and the other speaker. Here's their website: www.leranm.com.

The only thing I forgot was to write out the way to create a link. It's the one thing that Blogger doesn't automate for you. In the example below, I have put a space after the first < and before the /a> so that you can see the HTML instead of the link. Copy and remove the spaces before pasting into your blog:

< a href="http://www.mariannepowers.com">Doing the Right Thing< /a>

When you remove the spaces, it looks like this: Doing the Right Thing

Blogging 101 at LERA

I will be presenting Blogging 101 again, this time at the Land of Enchantment Romance Authors (LERA) meeting this Saturday, June 10. We will have lunch at 11 at the Boston Market at Academy Road and Wyoming Boulevard in Albuquerque. The LERA meeting will be one block east at the Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church at Academy and Moon. The meeting starts at noon and my presentation starts about 1 PM.

Blogging 101 is the presentation I made at Southwest Writers in February and includes:

Setting up an account in Blogger (Google's free blog service)
Choosing your blog server (yours or theirs)
Choosing a template (many choices, also free)
Allowing comments (it's not a blog without comments!)
Creating your first post
Other setup options
Editing the HTML (gasp!)
AdSense (making money with your blog)
Getting your blog noticed

Quotes

As I learned from Toastmasters, a one-sheet is a faxable, postable one-page document that gives information about a speaker and the topics that he or she speaks on. I will post mine on my website later, but here are the quotes that I used on it:

We already know how to help each other achieve any goal.
We already know how to resolve any conflict.
- Marianne Powers

That is what learning is:
You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
- Doris Lessing

Region III Conference (continued)

They did let us out in the evenings to have dinner and mingle with our fellow Toastmasters. I met Toastmasters from all nine Districts in our region, which includes Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and southern Wyoming. Although I missed the regular educational sessions both days, I got to participate in the evening entertainment.

The first night, our hosts from Oklahoma performed, told stories, recited poety, and sang songs from their state's past. They even explained what Sooners (the people who snuck in before the land rush) and Boomers (the ones who were there for it) were.

The second night we had the International Speech Contest with nine of the very best speakers from our region. My favorite was Ron Chapman, a writer, public speaker, consultant, facilitator, and mentor. He said that we all move at the speed of pain and recommended to us what his mentor told him, "cuddle up to your pain" because it is the greatest gift (that nobody wants!).

Region III Conference (continued)

Two days of intense training! Originally referred to as "Special Training for District Officers" but later known but its more truly evocative title, "Lockdown". It was for the incoming District Governors, Lieutenant Governors of Education, and Lieutenant Governors of Marketing from 9 Districts. But we did have a multitude of excellent trainers and I feel like I now know something about marketing! You can learn a lot from Toastmasters!

Region III Conference

I arrived in Oklahoma City last night just in time for the reception over at the Oklahoma City Marriott, which is just across the parking lot. I don't have a room there until tonight. Region III reserved rooms for Friday and Saturday night but not for Thursday night. If the conference starts at 8 in the morning, wouldn't you reserve some for the night before? Ah, but they're not the only ones. This happened when I went to Florida for the Medical Manager Conference and to Washington DC for the HIPAA Conference, too. I had to stay one night in a different hotel. As you can probably guess, I usually wait until the last minute to make my reservations. But I still don't understand!

On the Way to OKC

I have postdated this entry for tomorrow. At first light, I will be up and on my way to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for the Toastmasters Region III Conference, where I will learn how to be a Lieutenant Governor of Marketing to serve District 23! Toastmasters conferences are always educational, enlightening, and fun! We will have educational sessions, entertainment, and listen to the International Speech Contestants compete for the Regional championship. Whoever wins will go on to the World competition in Washington, DC, in August, and then there will be a new World Champion of Public Speaking. I expect to see many people from New Mexico there and meet lots of people from the other eight states in our region. This year, I am also going to the International Conference so that I can meet people from all over the world. You can read all about Toastmasters at www.toastmasters.org. Maybe I'll see you there!